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My notes and thoughts from Biology 111 Lab, for Monday, September 15, 2008. The entire series can be found here.

In this lab, we learned to use reagents to test for the presence of proteins, starch, and sugars, using distilled water as a negative control.

Since distilled water should be straight H2O and nothing else, each time we did a test, we could see what the reagent did in solution without the presence of whatever it was we were testing for.

We worked in groups, and our group consisted of four students.

A. In the first experiment, we tested for the presence of proteins with Biuret reagent, a highly corrosive blue/purply substance. Our Lab Manual and Doc each warned us about its potential hazards, safety precautions, and what to do if we got it on our skin.

We marked four test tubes at the 1 cm level.

1) Test tube 1 we filled to the mark with distilled water. We then added about 5 drops of Biuret reagent. The water turned light blue. This was our negative control to which we could compare the other tubes when the Biuret reagent was added.

My notes and thoughts from Biology 111 Lab, for Monday, September 8, 2008. The entire series can be found here.

In this lab we mostly talked about metric system measurements, then went about taking measurements of various things. Honestly, it was pretty mundane stuff for the most part, and I didn’t enjoy this lab nearly as much as the first two, though I understand the necessity of it.

We used rulers, calipers, and a scale to take measurements of wooden blocks, then calculated their volume and surface area.

We measured the room temperature and the temperature of cold tap water and ice water, and water on a boiling plate, as well as skin temperature.

Then, in the most interesting part of the lab, we measured each other’s tibias, and then each other’s heights (as well as a real dead guy’s tibia). We recorded the tibia length and height of everyone in the lab, and for homework we created scatter plots and trend lines with those numbers.

It was pretty straightforward stuff, really, and well… kinda boring except for the dead guy’s bone that Squicky Britches refused to touch. That was a source of mild humor.

Sometimes there are things I want to address, but outside the context of UDoJ. I’ve been thinking about setting up a separate blog for that.

Here it is.

First of all, I was going to say that I’m the author of U Dream Of Janie and Kissing Corporal Kate. But the truth is the girls have taken on such a life of their own that I’m really just the secretary that takes dictation.

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